She told him then, making pitiful confession of her own pride and her
anxiety to spare Chris's name.
"I couldn't bear to have them suspect he had gone to the war because of
a girl. Whatever he ran away from, Clay, he's doing all right now."
He listened gravely, with, toward the end, a jealousy he would not
have acknowledged even to himself. Was it possible that she still loved
Chris? Might she not, after the fashion of women, be building a new and
idealized Chris, now that he had gone to war, out of his very common
clay?
"He has done splendidly," he agreed.
Again the warmth and coziness of the little room enveloped him. Audrey's
low huskily sweet voice, her quick smile, her new and unaccustomed
humility, and the odd sense of her understanding, comforted him. She
made her indefinite appeal to the best that was in him.
Nothing so ennobles a man as to have some woman believe in his nobility.
"Clay," she said suddenly, "you are worrying about something."
"Nothing that won't straighten out, in time."
"Would it help to talk about it?"
He realized that he had really come to her to talk about it. It had been
in the back of his head all the time.
"I'm rather anxious about Graham."
"Toots Hayden?"
"Partly."
"I'm afraid she's got him, Clay. There isn't a trick in the game she
doesn't know. He had about as much chance as I have of being twenty
again. She wants to make a wealthy marriage, and she's picked on Graham.
That's all."
"It isn't only Marion. I'm afraid there's another girl, a girl at the
mill--his stenographer. I have no proof of anything. In fact, I don't
think there is anything yet. She's in love with him, probably, or she
thinks she is. I happened on them together, and she looked--Of course,
if what you say about Marion is true, he can not care for her, even,
well, in any way."
"Oh, nonsense, Clay. A man--especially a boy--can love a half-dozen
girls. He can be crazy about any girl he is with. It may not be love,
but it plays the same tricks with him that the real thing does."
"I can't believe that."
"No. You wouldn't."
She leaned back and watched him. How much of a boy he was himself,
anyhow! And yet how little he understood the complicated problems of a
boy like Graham, irresponsible but responsive, rich without labor, with
time for the sort of dalliance Clay himself at the same age had had
neither leisure nor inclination to indulge.